Throughout your lifetime, you’re going to experience various setbacks on your path to your ideal life. For example, even good people get passed over for promotions that other good people get instead. Setbacks happen, but they don’t have to be the end. You can benefit from setbacks and become stronger than ever if you are ready for them in advance and have a plan.
Start before the Setback
You know that setbacks are part of life: promotions are lost, an unexpected medical procedure takes your savings, a pipe bursts, you rear-end someone and it costs a lot of money… Things happen. But if you are ready for setbacks to happen regardless of your role, it’ll be easier to adjust. Set up your life so that you are healthy, organized, and acting with intention, and no setback can ruin anything for you.
Name It and Claim It
You don’t have fake happiness during a setback. It’s okay to express your frustration and disappointment. But you don’t want to appear to be angry and blaming others either. Instead, take time to process the situation and give it some thought before you react in public to the setback.
Work on Your Mindset
When you think about it, any type of setback or failure is progress too. It’s a sign that you’re moving forward. Anything you’ve ever learned in life came with a small price attached to it. When you go through hard things, you always grow from it if you are seeking to learn. A mindset of learning will go far in helping you get through it.
Network with Others
When you are upset about a setback, the last thing to do is isolate yourself. Retreating is not going to offer you the support that you need. Instead, make plans with the people who pump you up and support you most so that you can hash out the setback and get back on track.
Seek Feedback
Find a mentor who can give you professional feedback that your friends may not be equipped to give you. Remember that your friends love you and it may be hard for them to be straightforward. A professional or a mentor can cut through the issue and give you better advice so you can make plans for overcoming the setback.
Identify the Issues
Once you’ve had time to separate yourself from the pain of failure, write the issues down objectively. Get all the facts together without the emotions behind it. For example, maybe the fact is you were overlooked for the promotion is due to something in your control, but sometimes it’s not going to be in your control. Maybe you need to find another company to work with.
Get Educated
The more you learn about the reasons for the setback, the more you can do to identify the issues about the setback that you can control and those that you cannot control. The areas you can control are the areas you need to focus your education on.
Next time something doesn’t go according to plan, don’t freak out. Instead, be mindful and look at the situation with a 360-degree view so that you can learn from it. When you learn from a setback, you can prevent the same thing from happening in the future and even come out ahead in the end.
